Help on landing

[Bluehammer 10]

Hi folks, I was hoping one of you fine pilots might be able to offer some advice to a total n00b.

I'm currently going through the tutorials and thoroughly enjoying them so far. However, I am having some real problems with the Landing tutorial, in particular losing speed in a controlled manner and countering drift.

Can anybody offer some advice on either of those two areas or landing in general?

Thanks in advance

[Bothersome 10]

Well, these are not like real helicopter they tell me.

But in this game so far, when you get to about 1 mile from your target start easing back on the cyclic. Take out some collective to keep your altitude from rising. As the heli slows to about 50 knots, ease some collective back into the blades to give some lift back but keep altitude same. Maybe let it fall a little as experience comes. Keep the nose straight until speed has bleed off. Once you're in the yellow speed area, just cyclic forward till level.

As you gain experience, you circle around while descending on your target landing spot. Using the circling to bleed off most of your speed.

Landing on a certain spot is the hardest thing it seems.

To practice landing go to the airport and hover about and learn to control your drifting there till you get it down.

If you're drifting all over the place, you still got practicing to do.

By the way, it took me about 6 months to learn to hover an RC helicopter well. And another 6 for nose-in hover (although that doesn't apply here).

I would imagine it would take a few months to get it down in this game too.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Bothersome

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

i don't mean to be rude bother but i think it would be detrimental to his training if he should fly in the yellow arc of the airspeed indicator to the landing site, because once BiS implements vortex ring state he's gonna get in trouble.

first thing's first you need to learn how to hover. use trim setting to stabilize your helicopter then use small cyclic movements to keep it from moving. keep your eyes outside and don't stare at your gauges. pick a bush or a tree in the near distance as a reference point to so you can monitor sideway movement etc.

for a normal approach you do the following.

initial airspeed should be 60 knots, but bis programmed the game all wrong with the light helos so unless you're at 40knots and below you won't descend properly.

intial altittude for a text book normal approach is 300-350agl (above ground level), but the altimeter in game gives you MSL (mean sea level). so if your landing spot is say 800MSL on your altimeter your starting point should be 1100MSL on your altimeter. although it's kind of irrelevent what alttitude you start from as long as you keep the approach angle correct which i will explain.

to make an approach angle for normal approach, make an imaginary line on your cannopy, the line should be 2/3 way up from top of the dash to the compass. line your intended landing area with that imaginary line and keep it there with collective adjustments.

reduce your speed very slowly from starting point to touch down but never below 30 knots until you're pretty close to your touch down point. once you're near flare up and decrease collective so you don't balloon up and mess up your approach angles. remember as you get slower and closer to your landing spot more collective is needed to keep your descend angle and to arrest your descend rate.

also the closer you get the less descend rate is needed to keep the sight picture which is why i recommend you to slow down below 30 when you're close to your landing spot to reduce the chances of you getting into settling with power.

as you come real close to the touch down point just inch yourself forward and relax on the controls. make sure you're countering translating tendency (right drift) with slight left cyclic when you're slow and on hovering. your left skid should touch the ground first, hence the saying left skid first for rotorhead. as you're coming to the landing spot lower your collective little by little until you touch down. do not drop the collective, that is bad practice and it can also damage your helicopter and you can have a dynamic roll over.

here's a video of me making a normal approach to the middle of the runway just before my turn into the taxiway. keep your eyes on the taxiway entrance where i come down and see how i keep it on an imaginary line on the cannopy all the way down and it doesn't move up or down.

as i mention why not to fly in the yellow arc in the airspeed indicator is the danger of vortex ring state or settling with power.

settling with power happens when you're below ETL (effective translational lift) airspeed which is usually 16-24 knots and you're descending more than 300fpm on your VSI (vertical speed indicator).

when rotor blades spin, at the tip of the blade it makes these vortices, which reduce lift produced by the blades. but the same vortices are irrelevant when you acheive ETL, because the airspeed blows the vortices away from the blades and they no longer affect us and we gain additional lift.

if you're below ETL and descending more than 300fpm what happens is that those vortices gets sucked back into the main rotor and we no longer have clean air to produce lift on the rotor blades and we're in a settling with power situation.

what happens next is you loose lift and you start to descend faster and faster even though you're applying up collective to try and arrest the descend.

the proper way to recover from it is to lower your collective and dip the nose down to gain airspeed above ETL then you can level out and pull up collective to arrest your descend. if you've ever played dcs blackshark they've modelled that pretty well in the game.

that is why i say not to fly your approach in the yellow arc of the airspeed indicator because you're only a few knots away from loosing etl then you can get into a lot of trouble if you're near the ground.

i know i wrote a wall of text but it is crucial to learn these points to fly safely even in a simulator. my instructor told me before i started learning landing approaches is that they're the hardest manuevers to learn in helicopter flying, took me a little over 10 hours of actual flight time to get it down. so be patient and be smooth with the controls, adjust with small increments of movement. hope this helps anyone who is having trouble making landing approaches.

[jedra 11]

As with the OP I am also having serious problems landing. I decided to stop being a wuss and turned off auto-hover and then spent 3 or 4 hours yesterday trying to complete the first landing training (simple landing, erm, not for me!).

I think my problem is getting the fine and smooth control needed as I am either going too fast or suddenly flying backwards at a rate of knotts. It is either going to take a lot of practice or a better input device than my 360 controller (or more likely both of these).

I think that as someone else said, rather than use the actual traning mission I might just have to plant a helipad in the editor and try and land on it first. The heliport in the training mission has rather a lot of 'navigational hazzards' around it for me to practice properly and confidently. Also after a while I do want to kill the instructor and/or find a way for him to 'get back on the correct heading' via the shortest possible route!

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

have you gotten rid of your deadzone? the default settings has like a 15% deadzone.

[TAW_RiEvEr 10]

I agree, wipe out the deadzones!

(Great video btw MD!) ;)

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

thanks for watching =D.

[dale0404 5]

You and me both Jedra, time to stop being a wuss!

My biggest problem is that the heli goes backwards, is it just a case of anticipating this or something else?

[daikan 1]

I noticed you need to be very careful with what controller(s) you pick for mastering expert mode. Most important is a joystick that lets you apply "pressure" easily e.g. which doesn't have a too strong (spring-)mechanism to auto-center it.

For example in my case I had to "fix" my crappy old Saitek AV8R by disabling the big spring which auto-centers it (using rubber bands :) ) After that I was actually able to control the helos pretty well and also make effective use of manual trimming. However, pedal movements are still not ideal as I need to apply constant force because of its inherent auto-centering mechanism (twist control). But all in all it made me realize what I have to look for when purchasing my next set of controllers (and not blaming BIS for coding a twitchy FM).

Edited November 1, 2011 by daikan

[Bluehammer 10]

Thanks for the replies, and thank you so much for the informative write-up and video link MD500.

Like Jedra, my biggest problem is dropping/gaining speed too quickly or going backwards, so I'll definately try some free-fly landing practice and check my deadzone settings as I seem to go from about 75 - 0 knots very quickly.

Incidently, if it worth getting used to trim now or is that something that can wait until later? I only ask as it seems to get mentioned on the boards quite a lot but I haven't encountered it in the tutorials yet.

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

you should be using trim to relieve the constant pressure you're using on your joystick so that your joystick can return to a more neutral position and you can make small adjustments as necessary.

---------- Post added at 10:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:29 AM ----------

for instance, when you come to a hover and have to apply constant left cyclic pressure, what you can do next is trim left cyclic a little bit and you can slowly move the joystick back to neutral position and take a nice deep breath and relax.

[jedra 11]

After a bit more practice this morning I have come to the conclusion that I probably need a better controller. I have a MS Sidewinder Pro in the loft, so I will try that. The 360 controller doesn't allow fine enough control of the collective. I also think that curves for pitch/roll are too steep.

Given my bashed up shoulders it will have to wait a few weeks though as I can't use a table top joystick until they are better! Besides, I can't get into the loft anyway!

Keep the tips coming though as I am already getting better with the advice here. I can now get on the ground without rolling over every time (most times, yes, but not every time now!). Unfortunately I cannot get anywhere near the test pad I set up in the editor - at the moment my passengers have to walk their bruised a battered bodies quite a distance!

[dale0404 5]

I might make a sp/mp mission just for that reason Jedra, landing!

[DenisFerrari 10]

Hi, like many, my biggest problem is establish a good hovering before landing ... 90% of the times I start to drift backwards! I fly helicopters ... But still do not understand that backwards drift. I've zeroed null zones but it does not change a lot, but increases chanches of over controlling the hely. It seems present a quite important delay even with lightest helicopters... I'm using Force Feedback 2.

Any suggestion is very well appreciated ;)

Denis Ferrari

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

how odd that if you fly real helicopters that you never encountered the backward drift if you don't counter it before take off. for me when soloing in r22 i have to push the stick quite a bit forward and left, due to less weight in the cabin the helicopter wants to drift backwards with full tank of fuel.

[DenisFerrari 10]

how odd that if you fly real helicopters that you never encountered the backward drift if you don't counter it before take off. for me when soloing in r22 i have to push the stick quite a bit forward and left, due to less weight in the cabin the helicopter wants to drift backwards with full tank of fuel.

Sure it drifts back while hovering but in the game it seems exaggerated , at least in the H500, the only one I tried. Also flight dynamics at low speeds seems quite poor... But Icm sure they are going to improve all this

[Bluehammer 10]

Yay! I can land...sort of. I'm still about as accurate as a tabloid headline, but at least I can get the skids down reasonably close to where I want to be.

Jedra, I don't know how it affects a gamepad (I'm using a Thrustmaster Hotas X), but getting rid of the deadzone made a huge difference to me. I've also found 'fanning' the collective helps me control ascent and decent better. By that I mean moving the collective in lots of small nudges rather than a single push.

I know I'm slow, but I think I've finally got my head around the concept of collective. I was trying to use it like an arcade style throttle; ramp it to the desired level and it will stay constant, when in reality you need to keep an eye on it and be aware it constantly changes depending on the angle and speed you're heading. I now find it easier to watch needle and numbers than the green 'power' bar.

I still have problems drifting backwards, but I noticed it happens when my speed goes into negative figures (I know, obvious right). It still happens a lot, but at least by keeping an eye on my negative speed I can counter it easier.

I also have a tendancy to bounce quite badly on landing, but I assume this is due to either coming down too hard, or not dropping collective quick enough once down.

Thanks for the help so far, now I'm off to try that blessed pinnacle landing...

[zoog 18]

Sure it drifts back while hovering but in the game it seems exaggerated , at least in the H500, the only one I tried. Also flight dynamics at low speeds seems quite poor... But Icm sure they are going to improve all this

If you have problems drifting backwards, it's your job to trim the helicopter correctly or anticipate it with forward stick movement. Doesn't necessarily mean that the dynamics are poor (or maybe they are, but it's not a good argument just because you cannot get it into a stable hover ;)). Most of all you need practice, a lot of practice. And you need to get a feel for the helicopter in all the different situations, wind conditions etc and anticipate how the helicopter will react :)

Edited November 2, 2011 by zoog

[docehrenhoefer 10]

Crucial is good adjustment of the y-axis of the stick.

I have reduced the deadzone to about 2-3%, then I have reduced sensitivity of the y-axis around the middle position and more movement in the outer areas of the y-axis.

The x-axis was left alone except for lowering the deadzone.

Works like a dream, as I can apply more movement on the stick during slow flight, so the heli won´t overreact.

Ah, and I forgot: when using rudder pedals, you mostly hav to counter strafing movement. So watch your vector!

Edited November 3, 2011 by docehrenhoefer
forgot sth.

[DenisFerrari 10]

Crucial is good adjustment of the y-axis of the stick.

I have reduced the deadzone to about 2-3%, then I have reduced sensitivity of the y-axis around the middle position and more movement in the outer areas of the y-axis.

The x-axis was left alone except for lowering the deadzone.

Works like a dream, as I can apply more movement on the stick during slow flight, so the heli won´t overreact.

Ah, and I forgot: when using rudder pedals, you mostly hav to counter strafing movement. So watch your vector!

I think this is the key point.

Qustion : how do you set sensitivity around central stick positions ? In the controller customize page , on the upper page I see the 3 different rules, but even clicking on those, I cannot set one ore the other ?

Any help on this ?

[Bluehammer 10]

Ah, and I forgot: when using rudder pedals, you mostly hav to counter strafing movement. So watch your vector!

I was suffering from this quite badly last night, especially when travelling slow and low. What is the best way of countering the strafe, just small corrections with the cyclic?

I also encountered another problem I could do with some advice on. Just as I was about to touch down the helicopter would suddenly start ascending very quickly, with my vertical speed going from -2 to +7 or so. It only happens when I am metres from the ground, but creates a 'bounce' that throws me totally of course (and in a crowded landing usually in to a building). Is this ground effect and if so what is the best way to counter it?

[MD500Enthusiast 10]

I was suffering from this quite badly last night, especially when travelling slow and low. What is the best way of countering the strafe, just small corrections with the cyclic?

I also encountered another problem I could do with some advice on. Just as I was about to touch down the helicopter would suddenly start ascending very quickly, with my vertical speed going from -2 to +7 or so. It only happens when I am metres from the ground, but creates a 'bounce' that throws me totally of course (and in a crowded landing usually in to a building). Is this ground effect and if so what is the best way to counter it?

no that is not ground effect but it is how this game simulates ground effect which is total bogus. anyway best way to handle it i found is to approach your landing zone slowly and slightly higher than your normal landing height, and anticipate when that bump will occur. it seems that it occurs when the vertical axis of the rotor meets the new edge/ground/building etc. so just decrease your collective quite a bit as it comes into contact.

Edited November 3, 2011 by MD500Enthusiast

[Bluehammer 10]

Thanks MD. I was a little concerned that decreasing the collective quickly might result in the craft slamming into the ground, but I suppose as long as I'm coming in slowly it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[docehrenhoefer 10]

Hi,

this is a very crude drawing of the joystick sensitivity adjustment I did under controllers in the options menu. I am at work right now, so I could not make a screenshot, sorry.

What is important - I think - I use a TM Warthog as a stick.

Greets

[daikan 1]

I very much second that the axis sensitivity curve is very crucial here and I'd suggest to invest a fair amount of time in tweaking the settings to best suit for your controller(s) and personal taste.

The only thing I seem to be missing is a value multiplier setting <1.0 as in my case I still think my joystick is overreacting (mostly resulting in x-axis oscillations) no matter what value I set the curve to... I guess I can use external tools like PPJoy + GlovePIE to achieve that but it's not that trivial (my standard joystick SW doesn't allow to do that).

Also, I have a feeling that overall responsiveness is not very realistic because input handling seems to lag a fair amount (as in ArmA2 actually) and therefore likely to also contribute in inducing those annoying oscillations. But I'm not a RL heli pilot so I can't really say for sure...

Edited November 3, 2011 by daikan